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To commemorate the one-year anniversary of lockdown, this months theme is insomnia.
Here are my top four in ascending order.
Lie in bed and pretend youre a slowly decomposing fruit.
Perform a detailed analysis of that discomfort: Did your back hurt?
Toggling back-and-forth between the two frames of reference always helps coax me into the abyss.
You must stay in for at least 20 minutes.
Read (see below) by candlelight.
The flickering offers a visual lullaby.
The Decagon House Murdersby Yukito Ayatsuji
Fiction, 1987
Behold, the perfect escapist drug!
If I could crush this book into a powder and snort it, I would.
Its a cult-classic Japanese mystery loosely based on Agatha ChristiesAnd Then There Were None.
The something else here is a puzzle.
The genre is defined by a few elements.
Is there a shocking twist?
Are the clues subtly planted?
Does it take place in an intriguing closed environment?
Could a reader plausibly solve it?
If so, congrats, it might be ashin honkaku.
They stay in a ten-sided house and are serially murdered.
One of the murders involves lipstick.
I wont spoil anything else.
If you dont believe me, just ask the universe: Theres anasteroidnamed after the author!
I simply had to find out whether the book would makemestare at a wall.
(Your mother cant know about this.)
Her dad is a traveling hardware salesman in Pinochet-era Chile.
Together they hawk screwdrivers, fudge expense reports, and listen to the radio.
M has an emotional intelligence so acute that it borders on mind-reading.
(Vida even includes a reference to the trick-or-treat cash now thats research!)
One day, Maria Fabiola vanishes.
Another member of the group follows.
Absorb thehistory of sumptuary lawfrom aSTANFORD PROFESSORwhose book contains a section titledDecorative Orthodontic Devices (a.k.a.
Prowl theLOWER EAST SIDEwith Richard Price?
Nobody writes abetter procedural!
Consider whether one of myALL-TIME FAVORITE NOVELSwillenteryour personal hall of fame?
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